Chicago Bears Draft Grade
I have survived being a Chicago Bears fan by trying to be realistic. Naturally, that includes knowing when to not watch, but this is not one of those years! Beware: I don’t need to see a Super Bowl trophy to enjoy watching Bears Football, I just need it to look like Bears Football!
Chicago Bears football used to more or less guarantee that the opponent was going to have a lot of painful memories in the hot tub/ice bath cycles over the next few days after the game. If you beat us, it was expensive! 2021 showed us opponents openly laughing at our coach in post game pressers. That is NOT Chicago Bears Football.
The evidence continues to mount that the coming season should look very, very different from what we saw over the last several years. The hiring process for GM and HC was a radical departure from business as usual for Halas Hall. In many ways, Ryan-n-Matt 2.0 makes me think that Ryan-n-Matt 1.0 was actually Ryan-n-Matt -2.0…pure mathematical opposites.
This season is not just a coaching change for the Bears. It is burning down Mt Dead Cap. It is throwing away an entire regime built on cleverness and complication. It is building a new regime on simplicity, execution, and relentless effort. I can’t imagine how people can expect this to be “too awful to watch”?
One of the few “truisms” I endorse is that doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results, really is a pretty good definition of insanity. To me, a close second to that is seeing something so objectively different and expecting the same old same ol’.
There are only a few players left from last year’s regime, but those who are know bloody well that they got thrown under a bus last season. They are sick and tired of being the most predictable team in football. They are even sicker and more tired of the “lack of talent” accusations, or they should be, considering their HC never, ever seemed to have a cohesive game plan.
The HITS system has to sound like football heaven to players sick of that unfair assessment, and we will find out who those players are as the off season rolls along. All others will be cut, but hopefully, so many will buy in that we get poached a lot and can’t afford to extend everybody who deserves it come season’s end.
For a little extra cube in your Kool Aid, consider that if enough guys develop fast enough, some may develop into trade bait.
As always, PLEASE don’t go betting big bucks on post-season bets, for or against, but consider what a fresh look can do for a team with a couple too many “nobodies”. If there was ever a season to relax and wait to see what the team looks like on the field, this is the one!
The most recent evidence that the Bears are deep in uncharted territory, though I’ll be delighted to be behind the times on that, was the revelation that Ryan Poles and Justin Fields watched film together in the run up to the draft. Quick! List every GM and HC in Chicago Bears History you can picture doing that. I’m still stuck at zero!
Now, I have spent enough time over the years working in techno-geeky areas to know that sometimes the line between Leading Edge and Bleeding Edge can be dangerous to navigate. But this is shockingly new and different for the Chicago Bears, and I mean that in a good way.
Is it “New Age trash” to some old school guys? Prob’ly. But, the directors of Diversity and of Player Engagement were involved in hiring Ryan Poles and Matt Eberflus for a reason. These are the kinds of things Bill Polian was considering, although, not likely talking about, because nobody was at the time, when Polian was building the Colts Super Bowl team.
Hopefully, old school guys can at least see the benefit of execution and fundamentals being more important than cleverness. Stat-mongers, of course will scoff at this approach as if teams like the 2018 Bears or the “Helmet Catch” Giants never happened. The Halas Hall Kool Aid answer is, “Changes as dramatic and profound as the Bears are going through now? Those don’t happen every season!”
With that, here are the explanations for the following A+ Chicago Bears Draft Grades:
Chicago Bears Draft Grade for Kyler Gordon
Chicago Bears Draft Grade for Jaquan Brisker
